I was never very good at algebra, and now that I've been out of school for five years I've forgotten most of the formulas. I'm prepping for my Compass test so that I can apply at a community college and I'm having a really hard time with a lot of the practice questions for advanced algebra. Rate problems seem to be the most difficult for me to comprehend, so I'll ask about those first. I'm not so much looking for an answer to this problem as a decent explanation on how to solve it:

Two cyclists start biking from a trail's start 3 hours apart. The second cyclist travels at 10 miles per hour and starts 3 hours after the first cyclist who is traveling at 6 miles per hour. How much time will pass before the second cyclist catches up with the first from the time the second cyclist started biking?

I remember doing columns for time, rate, and distance in school but I'm having some difficulty both setting it up and figuring out where to go from there.

Cyclist 1T: R: 6D:

Cyclist 2T:R: 10D:

I'm not sure what to do with the 3 hours. Would it be the time for the first cyclist, and then the distance would be 18? And if it is, where do I go from there?

Any help is much appreciated. I know it probably seems stupid, but it's amazing what you forget if you don't put it to use for so long.

I'd like to note that I have looked up similar problems and tutorials on solving them, but they weren't very helpful. Like most people I'm a visual learner, so if you provide links to other places it would be most appreciated if they weren't just sample equations thrown on a page.

Chani wrote:I'm not so much looking for an answer to this problem as a decent explanation on how to solve it:

Two cyclists start biking from a trail's start 3 hours apart. The second cyclist travels at 10 miles per hour and starts 3 hours after the first cyclist who is traveling at 6 miles per hour. How much time will pass before the second cyclist catches up with the first from the time the second cyclist started biking?